Excerpt from Box. Untitled.2014. performed by Karolis Variakojis and Vytautas Oškinis at AHEAD festival, Vilnius

Box. Untitled.2014. functions in the form of both performance and sound installation. Museum labels found in the Cyprus Museum describing the artefacts are processed into a video-text and projected onto the surface of a DIY percussion instrument. The instrument – a box – contains multiple sound objects that are played by two percussion players. Since the common narrative of the museum functions by removing the artefact from the space they were originally employed [in order to display it in a convenient yet artificial museum environment], the usage of the museum labels as the only signifying material pushes this approach even further, by simply removing the object whatsoever. The fact that the audience nor the players themselves can’t see what instruments are being played exactly, further intensifies this approach, almost to a point of returning back to the physical object, only this time – solely thru a sound medium.

Music-wise, the performers were following a semi-improvised score, which contained key words of the text projection and short description of the sound events to be performed. The two performers were asked to follow the score by forming sentences in their score, thus creating a multiple narrative with differing tempos and cross-fading tempos and expressions. As well as playing the sound objects inside of the box, they were also triggering live electronics and video with each different word in their score.